Murim Login - Chapter 304

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 304
Inside the office, all light sealed away. As the hologram began to play in the darkness, I found myself seized by the sensation of standing at the very scene itself.
‘Where is this….’
Everything around me was ash-gray. My vision could not penetrate even a single step ahead.
Only after glimpsing the enormous wings of an eagle brushing past me did I understand where the footage had originated.
‘The sky.’
The drone capturing this entire vista descended rapidly to escape the fine particulate matter saturating the atmosphere.
Whiiiing.
After cutting through the fierce winds for what felt like an eternity, what finally emerged was a city engulfed in flames.
Boom! Ku-ku-ku-boom!
「Kyaaaaaaah!」
「Uaaaah!」
Factories belching smoke detonated in a chain reaction. Massive buildings collapsed like dominoes, and people—mere specks from this height—shrieked and scattered in all directions.
Pandemonium incarnate.
The sheer numbers were impossible to count individually.
Thousands were visible at a glance alone. Accounting for those beyond the camera’s reach, the total would number in the tens of thousands.
“What in the world….”
A sigh escaped me unbidden. Was it because of the factory explosions?
No. I had discovered entities moving through the labyrinthine city, wreaking destruction and slaughter in their wake.
「Kurrrrgh!」
「Kraaah!」
Massive bodies. Power and agility that could only be called monstrous.
Eyes gleaming with murderous intent swept across the surroundings before the creatures shrieked and began hunting for their prey.
‘Why are monsters there?’
The question lingered only briefly before I grasped the answer myself.
There was only one possibility.
‘A Monster Wave.’
During the Great Cataclysm, Gates served as passages connecting the Demon Realm—an otherworldly dimension—to Earth.
However, after Demon King Asmodeus perished, the monsters’ power waned, and the Gates became portals through which only humans could freely pass.
Yet there was one exception: if the magical energy within a Gate exceeded its capacity threshold, everything changed.
‘When the dam breaks, water floods forth.’
That was precisely what a Monster Wave was, and the result was the spectacle the hologram now displayed before us.
「Kiyaaaaaaah!」
「P-please…save me!」
Splurch!
The zoomed camera captured the urban massacre unfolding in stark detail.
Monsters advancing without restraint, slaughtering and destroying, while humans fell helplessly before them.
Some were pierced by monster claws and perished; others were trampled to death beneath the fleeing crowds.
Within that chaos, a mother and daughter caught my eye as they fled in desperation.
「Bing-bing! Hold Mommy’s hand tight!」
It was at that very moment when the woman cried out in desperation.
Screeeech! Thud!
A spear flew from the shadowed alley, piercing through the woman’s chest and embedding itself in the ground.
She coughed up blood once, her body going limp.
The child, witnessing her mother’s death before her very eyes, burst into tears.
「Mom!」
But it was far from over. More than a hundred orcs poured from the shadowed alley, advancing toward the child.
They had positioned themselves perfectly to cut off the escape routes of fleeing citizens.
An orc who appeared to be their leader raised his axe and brought it down upon the weeping child.
Whoosh! Crack!
「Huh?」
The leader looked down at his own arm with confusion in his eyes.
The thick arm holding the axe had been cleanly severed below the elbow. A man now stood before the stunned creature.
「You dare lay hands upon the people of China, you wretched monster?」
Shing! Slash!
A brilliant aura swept across the leader’s neck, severing his head. Before the creature’s head even hit the ground, a thunderous cry erupted from the man’s lips.
「Public Security Armed Force!」
「Yes, sir!」
A resounding chorus of affirmation.
The man was not alone. Hunters bearing the five-star red flag of China emblazoned upon their armor—members of the Public Security Armed Force—were continuously pouring onto the battlefield at this very moment.
The man’s eyes blazed as he shouted.
「Slaughter every last one of those foul beasts!」
「For the people!」
Whoooosh!
With a tremendous roar, nearly a thousand hunters surged forward.
Despite the catastrophic losses from the Great Cataclysm, China still boasted a population exceeding a billion.
While the individual strength of each hunter remained uncertain, the sheer number of hunters that could be mobilized was arguably the greatest in the world.
「Wipe them all out!」
「Long live the People’s Republic of China!」
A thousand hunters charging forward as one unified force.
The monsters were hardly the type to stand idle and watch. With all manner of creatures converging in a single location, their numbers easily exceeded a thousand.
「Grrrraaaaahhh!」
「Kyaaaauuuu!」
Boom boom boom boom boom!
Monster and human. Human and monster.
Two incompatible waves crashed toward one another.
Eyes gleaming with resolve and the killing intent to annihilate the enemy.
The immense impact was so overwhelming that it was hard to believe this was merely a holographic projection filling the office.
The drone captured the image of the two groups rapidly closing the distance between them from high above.
500 meters, 300 meters, 100 meters….
It was the very moment when a collision was about to occur, accompanied by a deafening roar that made my ears ring.
「Perish in the flames of calamity. Fire Rain.」
A hollow, lifeless voice. In that same instant, a fissure tore across the ashen sky.
Kiiiiing.
It was a sight I had never witnessed before.
Some thirty meters above the drone, the very fabric of space peeled away as though sliced by an invisible blade.
From the swirling vortex of black energy erupted an enormous mass of flame.
Whoooosh!
The Chinese hunters, their steps halting without conscious thought, stared blankly at the spectacle.
「This cannot be.」
「This is… a dream.」
Yet regrettably, for them it was all too real.
With a crackling sound, the sphere of flame—tens of meters in diameter—split into four pieces. Those four became dozens, and the dozens became hundreds of fragments.
Thus the rain of fire descended upon the earth.
Whooom. Kabooom!
Crash crash crash!
With thunderous explosions, the world turned crimson.
When the drone, swept up in the shockwave and reeling, finally regained its balance, the entity that had wrought this catastrophe was staring directly at it.
「A human contraption, I see.」
A voice devoid of any inflection or vitality.
The figure, draped in a robe inscribed with bizarre runes, pulled it low over its form and extended a finger toward the drone.
「I shall slay you all and claim your possession. Any who dare trespass upon my domain shall pay the price in blood.」
Zzzzzzt!
The moment that gnarled finger—like the root of an ancient tree—moved, the signal dissolved into static.
With it vanished both the ashen sky laden with particulate dust and the desolate landscape below that seemed to embody the very word “ruin.”
The office fell into heavy silence as the hologram dissipated.
I was the first to break that silence.
“What in the hell is that thing?”
“The orchestrator of this monster wave. Though calling it an orchestrator is imprecise, given it is no human.”
Choi Team Leader continued in a grave tone.
“A Named Monster—Lich. That is its true identity.”
* * *
Lich.
A fallen archmage. The apex predator reigning atop a pyramid of countless undead.
That Lich, which had vanished without trace since the Great Cataclysm, had appeared. It announced its return after decades of absence by orchestrating a catastrophe of staggering proportions.
Choi Team Leader withdrew the USB as he spoke.
“November 5th. Precisely ten days from today. This is footage captured by a reconnaissance drone belonging to the Chinese Intelligence Bureau, showing a small city near Nanchong City in Sichuan Province. The estimated casualties thus far number approximately 300,000. An exact count remains impossible to ascertain.”
Sichuan Province.
To me, it is more familiar as the land where Qingcheng and Emei—sects belonging to the Nine Major Sects and One Alliance—are situated, and where the Tang Sect, a member of the Five Great Families, is located.
Of course, the Martial World wears the face of China yet is an entirely separate realm, and what the hologram had revealed was a catastrophe of unimaginable scale.
“300,000?”
“Yes.”
“This is insane….”
“That’s the casualty count within 24 hours of the Wave’s emergence.”
A chill ran down my spine.
In just a single day, the estimated death toll alone reached 300,000. Had humanity ever suffered such devastation from a monster Wave since the Great Cataclysm?
“Are Liches normally this powerful as monsters?”
My question wasn’t directed at Choi Team Leader, but at Kim Butler—the only eyewitness among us who had lived through the Great Cataclysm.
His pupils trembled with shock.
“That shouldn’t be possible. The Liches I witnessed firsthand during the Great Cataclysm were certainly formidable beings, but… this one operates on an entirely different level. Just looking at it, the infernal magic it wielded was enough to make one’s skin crawl.”
Kim Butler was an A-rank mage who specialized in flame-based magic.
If someone who had endured every conceivable hardship through the Great Cataclysm spoke in such terms, I could gauge just how terrifyingly powerful this newly emerged Lich truly was.
‘Where in the world did such a thing crawl out from?’
The image of burning cities and people collapsing in pools of blood flickered before my eyes. The colossal rain of fire that had rained down upon the earth was calamity incarnate.
In that final moment, I recalled the creature’s declaration toward the camera.
‘I shall slaughter them all and claim everything. Those who dare set foot upon my territory shall pay the price in blood.’
No one else would have understood it, but I was different.
Thanks to the [Universal Language Pack], a component of the System, I had heard its words clearly and grasped their meaning.
That merciless undead monster would never be satisfied with merely one small city.
300,000 in a single day? Given the power it had demonstrated, the death toll by now could easily be ten times that.
“Damn it….”
I didn’t harbor any particular fondness for China, but no psychopath would laugh at such a catastrophe and call it deserved.
The helpless people dying, the little girl weeping for her lost mother—the memory left a bitter taste in my mouth.
‘Wait.’
As the shock began to recede, a single thought suddenly struck me.
Something was off. Ten days had passed since this catastrophe unfolded, yet the world remained eerily calm.
And more than that….
‘Where did Choi Team Leader obtain this information?’
If it were the Ares Guild, if it were Lee Jung-yong, I could understand. They were among the world’s most prominent guilds with exceptional intelligence networks.
But Choi Team Leader was merely the leader of a mid-tier guild. If he knew of this, news of the Sichuan Province catastrophe should already be broadcasting across global media.
‘There’s something more to this.’
I wasn’t the only one thinking this.
Everyone was staring at Choi Team Leader with eyes demanding explanation.
Choi Team Leader was perceptive enough not to miss such an atmosphere.
“A week ago, I received an unexpected contact.”
It was the day Ha-yeon’s college entrance exam had ended.
That day, Choi Team Leader had been staring at his phone for a while before excusing himself, saying something urgent had come up.
“A call from China, then.”
Choi Team Leader nodded.
“Yes. To be precise, it was a personal recruitment offer—a request for participation in this incident.”
“…Well, setting aside everything else, you’re saying he specifically requested me? From the Chinese side?”
“Yes. ‘He’ wanted it.”
“Who is he?”
A name flowed from Choi Team Leader’s lips.
“Xiao Yang.”
“What?!”
“Xiao Yang?”
“Young Master. Is that true?”
The moment I heard that name, everyone in the room’s eyes went wide. Of course, I was no exception.
I stared at Choi Team Leader with my mouth hanging open before finally managing to speak.
“X-Xiao Yang requested me?”
“Yes.”
“But who is Xiao Yang?”
“…!”
Why does he look like that? I wouldn’t necessarily know.
Choi Team Leader’s eyelids trembled for a long moment before he finally opened his mouth.
“Xiao Yang is the General Secretary of the Chinese Central Committee.”
“The what?”
“General Secretary! The President, the President of the nation!”
Oh my god, seriously?

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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